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Cly defended him. “If he doesn’t ask questions, he’ll never learn. ”
“I never asked questions like that. And I didn’t grow up to be no dummy. ”
The captain kept his eyes on the rails, watching Track 6 for any sign of an incoming transport. He picked Houjin’s two easiest questions, and he answered them. “Huey, you smell coal and diesel because some of the streetcars are coal powered and some are diesel. I reckon one day they’ll make them all one thing or the other, but it hasn’t happened yet. And yes, that’s a cemetery. ”
The boy whistled, drawing the attention of a small colored girl seated on a bench with her mother at Track 7. The child’s eyes went wide, but her mother said, “Don’t stare. It’s not polite. ” She stared anyway, and Houjin gave her a wave that she sent back with a dubious flap.
“It’s a cemetery? Must be about a million dead people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so big. ”
“Not a million, but a lot,” Cly told him. “They call it the city of the dead. ”
“A whole city full of dead people. Hey, we’ve got one of those back in—”
Cly whomped him on the arm and gave him a look that said to shut up.
“Ow,” he complained. “Well, you know what I was going to say. ”
Fang rolled his eyes. Kirby Troost said, “We all know, yes. Maybe you could put a lid on it, eh, kid?”
Fang gave the captain an elbow jab and pointed at the tracks.
“Here comes our car,” Cly said. “We’ll be in the city soon. Save up a few questions for when we get to town. ”
“Can I ask just one before we do?”
“One. Just one. ”
“Where will we stay while the Naamah Darling gets her work done?”
Troost said, “Actually, that’s not a half-bad thing to ask. Where will we stay, Captain? That lady friend of yours has a boarding house, doesn’t she?”
Cly rose to his feet and stretched. “We won’t be staying at the Garden Court. It’s not that kind of boarding house. ”
Troost said, “Ah,” and Fang looked relieved.
Houjin didn’t get it. “Why not? If she’s an old friend, and if she has rooms—”
“We’ll find someplace else. I’d hate to impose. Let it go, Huey. The Vieux Carré is full of places we can stay. Hotels by the score. We’ll pick one. ”
Soon Track 6 was host to a street rail car called Bayou Bess. Houjin rode the whole way to town up front, hanging over the rail and watching the scenery change. Cly, Troost, and Fang sat on a bench behind him, taking it easy since they didn’t know when they’d next get the opportunity. The wind blew through their hair and clothes, and even though it was every bit as warm as Cly had promised, they were comfortable riding along beside the main road, past the swampy parts of earth that filled up the space between grasslands and forest.
Fang nudged the captain, and since no one was paying much attention to them, he signed. Someone has to teach him, someday.
He said under his breath. “Not me. Not now. ”
One of the women at the Garden Court?
“God Almighty. His uncle would never let me hear the end of it. ”
They arrived at the downtown station just past Canal Street late in the afternoon, and upon debarking they headed toward Jackson Square, a few blocks nearer the river. “That’s strange,” the captain observed, watching someone draw down the shutters and begin the work of closing a restaurant.
“What’s strange?” asked Troost.
“I remember this as more of a round-the-clock town. Folks seem to be shutting up shop early. ”
From the stoop of a narrow, unmarked store that smelled of incense and coal, a stout black woman with a broom informed them, “It’s the curfew, closing us up. Costing all kinds of business, too—not that the Texians give a sainted cuss about it. ”
Cly and his crew members stopped, and the captain asked, since she sounded happy to share—“What curfew?”
